Pax Nortona - A Blog by Joel SaxFrom the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss2015-03-31T19:45:37Zhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?feed=atomWordPressJoelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=102202015-03-31T19:45:37Z2015-03-31T18:52:11Z addLoadEvent(meyshan_search_king_autocomplete_activate);

How discover the agent’s motive and whether he desired death itself when he formed his resolve, or had some other purpose? Intent is too intimate a thing to be more than approximately interpreted by another. It even escapes self-observation. How often we mistake the true reasons for our acts! We constantly explain acts due to petty feelings or blind routine by generous passions or lofty considerations.

The 1992 war in the Balkans was different from any war that we have fought here in America in that it was what you could call a commuter war. Soldiers fought on the battlefield all week and then went home on the weekends to decompress and spend time with their families. What I am about to describe happened on both the Croatian and the Serbian side. The fighters came home with their gear — uniforms, AK-47s, and even hand grenades. A few of these men — the stress of the combat still shaking their bones — called their families into the living room. They sat everyone down, took out the hand grenade on their belt, pulled, the pin, and dropped it in the middle of the floor, killing most if not everyone. After a few such incidents, the respective governments began making their troops leave their weapons behind before they went home.

I’m not going to attempt to ascribe a motive here. Homicidal ideation — as well as suicide — is sometimes associated with PTSD and other mental disorders. There is no question here that it was a horrible war with men committing atrocities and simply carrying out the grim task of murdering the enemy — many of whom had been their neighbors just a few weeks before — every day. The soldiers described here had access to a unique means to kill. That’s all one can say.

]]>0Joelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=102092015-03-31T18:31:49Z2015-03-31T08:45:08ZSlate Magazine published an article by Psychiatrist Anne Skomorowsky criticizing the press’s assumption that depression led Andreas Lubitz to dive into a German mountainside. She writes:

Was Andreas Lubitz depressed? We don’t know; a torn-up doctor’s note and bottles of pills don’t tell us much. Most people who commit suicide suffer from a mental illness, most commonly depression. But calling his actions suicidal is misleading. Lubitz did not die quietly at home. He maliciously engineered a spectacular plane crash and killed 150 people. Suicidal thoughts can be a hallmark of depression, but mass murder is another beast entirely.

I’ve given this passage a lot of thought. Was Lubitz an evil genius? I take exception to the conclusion that his actions were in any way “malicious”. Looking back at my own personal experience of suicide and others’ recollections of their suicide attempts, I don’t think that he was even thinking about the other people. Mass murder was not his motive: it was simple self-annihilation and the airplane was the handy tool by which he engineered it. I find it no different from the bottle of pills, the knife, or the gun that others use to bring about their own demise. For Lubitz to do what he did, I aver, the passengers in the plane had to become invisible to his mind. He locked the door. He set the controls downward. He breathed deep so as to calm and steel himself for the resolution of the act. He felt his body hurtling towards the mountain. He was alone.

In my experience, depression numbs. It distorts the facts and alters our decisions. I would not want to be in a depressive state with a gun in my hand. I might not just take my life, but I might also extend my reasoning to my wife who I would not want to condemn to a life of loneliness without me. Or I might use the gun to shoot anyone who tried to stop me from using it in a struggle. All this does not point to malevolence, but to despair.

How discover the agent’s motive and whether he desired death itself when he formed his resolve, or had some other purpose? Intent is too intimate a thing to be more than approximately interpreted by another. It even escapes self-observation. How often we mistake the true reasons for our acts! We constantly explain acts due to petty feelings or blind routine by generous passions or lofty considerations.

Besides, in general, an act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behavior may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature. Indeed, if the intention of self-destruction alone constituted suicide, the name suicide could not be given to facts which, despite apparent differences, are fundamentally identical with those always called suicide and which could not be otherwise described without discarding the term. The soldier facing certain death to save his regiment does not wish to die, and yet is he not as much the author of his own death as the manufacturer or merchant who kills himself to avoid bankruptcy? This holds true for the martyr dying for his faith, the mother sacrificing herself for her child,etc. Whether death is accepted merely as an unfortunate consequence, but inevitable given the purpose, or is actually itself sought and desired, in either case the person renounces existence, and the various methods of doing so can be only varieties of a single class. They possess too many essential similarities not to be combined in one generic expression, subject to distinction as the species of the genus thus established. Of course, in common terms, suicide is preeminently the desperate act of one who does not care to live. But actually life is none the less abandoned because one desires it at the moment of renouncing it; and there are common traits clearly essential to all acts by which a living being thus renounces the possession presumably most precious of all. Rather, the diversity of motives capable of actuating these resolves can give rise only to secondary differences. Thus, when resolution entails certain sacrifice of life, scientifically this is suicide….

Skomorowsky’s intention is, of course, a noble one. Lubitz’s death has once again invoked the specter of the mentally ill maniac. Already the media has its audience looking at the co-worker in the office suffering from burnout and wondering if he is about to “go postal” with his letter opener and his stapler. Declaring that his action was not suicide and therefore not likely to be the act of a depressed person removes the stigma, but probably misdefines the act. What I have learned in my years of dealing with high-functioning sufferers of bipolar disorder and depression is that unhappy people — like Tolstoy’s unhappy families — are each unhappy in their own way. Lubitz was an outlier — a mere blip of a hundredth or a thousandth of a percentage point, but I feel for the reasons I have cited above that despite the spectacular nature of his death, his exercise of it was well within the possibilities of the disease. What we cannot do is generalize from this tragedy caused by one man, erasing the character and the reality of the millions who live nonviolently with melancholy.

]]>0Joelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=101152015-03-31T09:25:52Z2015-03-08T20:00:18ZI was in the middle of an interesting if not entirely pleasant dream when the the alarm went off. I struggled into consciousness like one struggles to get to the surface when one has plunged too deep into a lake or the ocean, found the alarm, and turned it off. Sleepiness wrapped my head.

I was in this sorry state because the clocks had been set ahead. Eleven o’clock was actually ten o’clock. During the night, a thief mandated by Congress had stolen that hour. I felt terrible and cursed Benjamin Franklin because he was the one who invented Daylight Savings Time.

“It’s a good thing because we gain an hour of sunlight,” someone said to me. No, I pointed out, you have just as much sunlight in each day as you would have had if the clocks hadn’t been set ahead. The same number of hours and minutes were given to us regardless of where the sun was when it was noon. The only thing that had changed was when it would be noon.

DST is the bane of people living with bipolar disorder. Just when we have adjusted our internal clocks to the real time of day, we are forced to jump ahead. Finding your sleep interrupted in its true cycle does not help the mood. Many complain about how it disrupts their or their loved ones’ “circadian rhythm just enough to trigger a chain reaction toward mania.“

Waking up at the earlier hour profoundly afflicts me. My body clock has a certain cycle which DST cleaves into. Circadian rhythms say that it is not yet time to wake up, but I am forced to anyways or I lapse into a different waking schedule that has me arising at a later hour. Everyone thinks of DST as an extra hour in the evening, but it also means one less hour in the morning. 7 a.m., for example, is really 6 a.m. Your body says it is 6 a.m. and you feel like it.

Strong sleep medications are recommended for adjusting to DST and for crossing time zones, but I find they don’t solve the core problem. My inner clock is affixed to the real hours of the day for a long time. Only when the hour falls back do I feel well again.

Three percent of Americans — at least — feel like I do but our health means nothing to the majority who only think of the barbecues and time playing tennis in the park. I think many more do nothing at all with the shift of the clock. They remain strong advocates nonetheless because they have bought into the “extra hour” and cannot see its harm. Or they are unaware of its real effects. I would like to be rid of this Demon, but I have no hope for that — in this state at least. So I deal with the feeling of my eyes turning to the left as they seek the true rhythm that they know is theirs and strive to find in the darkness behind my face.

]]>1Joelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=101432015-03-31T09:24:37Z2015-03-14T06:53:18ZTo look at me, you wouldn’t think I was much of a bipolar success story. I can’t claim an impressive degree. I dress casually. You wouldn’t call me professional-looking which is the watch cry of our time. Bp Magazine won’t put me on its front page any time soon; I won’t be featured as a model of recovery. Many people will rush to judgement based on my sometimes slow demeanor that I am not very smart and in my low moods I am inclined to agree. I am a different face of bipolar disorder. My “fame” comes from industriously providing information and linking people living with the illness to one another. I do not seek to brand myself or put head shots out there as if I were an important personality who had beat the disease because I still live with it every day of my life. I have no secrets to impart, just my life experiences in which you might or might not recognize yourself.

Most people don’t. I am a bit of a freak.

This obscurity does bother me at times. When I read articles by bipolar pundits, they sound a lot like all the other bipolar pundits and I don’t want to be like that. Why don’t they look for people like me who bring a different perspective? I don’t know. I have trouble just getting people to read my blog because it isn’t like all the other bipolar blogs out there. And I am not one of the faces of recovery that the national organizations like you to see. I am not a self promoter. I don’t shave. Among some people in my region, I have a bad reputation due to a manic episode that I had a few years ago. The bad mouthing of certain people hectors me still. Those that know me intimately don’t believe the rumors, so I have few but good friends. I think it is more important to be there for individuals than to be famous, more important to work on creating something insightful than in presenting myself in the manner that we have come to expect of our spokespeople.

Mine is a face that disappears from the memory. People who have met me in person and known me online, forget what I look like. They see me in my casual dress and my hulking figure someone who shouldn’t be remembered at all, who doesn’t have a message that deserves to be shared. But I, too, live with bipolar disorder. I, too, have my stories. May I have the courage just to tell them without preaching at you.

The fact is we are painters in real life, and the important thing is to breathe as hard as ever we can breathe. — Vincent Van Gogh

A few months ago, a writer (a psychologist wouldn’t you know) in Skeptical Inquirer dissed the idea that Vincent Van Gogh had bipolar disorder. She invoked new evidence that suggested that he had not committed suicide, but had been shot by a local boy. Now this writer left out a lot of facts about Van Gogh’s life such as the deep depressions that afflicted him, the ear he cut off to send to a woman who jilted him, and the euphorias that took him to his own heaven. All these are documented in his letters to his brother Theo. These didn’t matter: the psychologist couldn’t stand the thought that Vincent could be capable enough to render his masterpieces and live with bipolar disorder.

This stigmatization through denial gives us a yet another reason to stand up and show our faces in the world. We are capable, we create beautiful things, we hold down jobs, we engage the world. I had a psychologist once very much like this woman. She was controlling, overbearing, and made me feel that I was a dangerous, abusive person based on some personal confessions about some things that I did long ago. She kept pushing me to get a job and told me that my wife was too kind towards me. She didn’t want me talking about my having been emotionally and physically abused as a child, demanding instead that I completely forgive, trust, and love my parents. She didn’t like that I pointed to famous people who lived with the illness either, marking it as a sign of grandiosity. In the end, because I would not become the person she wanted me to be, she dropped me. I did not trust another psychologist for nearly two years. The one I finally turned to, fortunately, did not put me through this hell even though she knew the same facts. She has helped me to move on and appreciate who I am.

Psychologists can either build us up or rob us of our accomplishments. The same is true of family and friends. Many people come to the support groups that I run complain about how they have been rejected as dangerous psychopaths by people who loved them when they were manic. All the years of knowing them didn’t matter. No one cut off their own ears (though a few practiced self harm) but I can’t help but feeling that they had their faces cut off.

Vincent gave us several faces to know him by. This is a good day to remember that we have faces, too, and to not be ashamed of them.

I must tell the truth here: I do not understand what Andreas Lubitz did. In my suicidal fugues, I thought of many ways that I might kill myself that involved others such as throwing myself in front of a truck or crashing my car into a tree or driving it off a cliff, but the idea of taking others with me — that wasn’t the self-annihilation that I planned. When I came close,I found a secluded place where someone would eventually find me. That was the maximum involvement of another that I planned. Though I thought capital punishment might work for me — and send a message to those who loved me — I did not want to assassinate others.

Andreas Lubitz was breathing, steady and calm, in the final moments of Germanwings Flight 9525. It was the only sound from within the cockpit that the voice recorder detected as Mr. Lubitz, the co-pilot, sent the plane into its descent.

The sounds coming from outside the cockpit door on Tuesday were something else altogether: knocking and pleading from the commanding pilot that he be let in, then violent pounding on the door and finally passengers’ screams moments before the plane, carrying 150 people, slammed into a mountainside in the French Alps.

In a different article, The New York Times reported that Lubitz concealed his illness from those closest to him:

Peter Rücker, a member of the flight club where Mr. Lubitz learned to fly, told Reuters television on Thursday that he knew the young man as a cheerful, careful pilot, and that he could not imagine him committing such an act.

Online, Mr. Lubitz appeared to be a keen runner, including at Lufthansa’s Frankfurt sports club, and had completed several half-marathons and other medium-distance races, including an annual New Year’s run in Montabaur in 2014.

A Facebook page with a few tidbits of his possible “likes” was visible Wednesday but had been removed by late morning on Thursday. It showed a photograph of a young man near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, though there were no clues to when the image was taken or any other details….

Data from the plane’s transponder also suggested that the person at the controls had manually reset the autopilot to take the plane from 38,000 feet to 96 feet, the lowest possible setting, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service. The aircraft struck a mountainside at 6,000 feet.

Before Mr. Lubitz, 27, a German citizen, set the plane on its 10-minute descent about half an hour into the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, the cockpit voice recorder picked up only the usual pilot banter, “courteous” and “cheerful” exchanges, the prosecutor said.

Then the commanding pilot asked Mr. Lubitz to take over. A seat can be heard being pulled back and a door closing as the captain exits the cockpit.

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, takes the position that nothing could be done, that even the best system in the world cannot protect the public 100% from such disasters. And they are confident that they have a good one.

I am not a big fan of willy nilly violations of confidentiality. It seems to me, however, that there should have been a way for the doctor to tell the airline that Lubitz was a danger to self and others and see that he was grounded. There should be ways for the pilot to open the door from the outside of the cockpit or to place a toilet inside the cockpit so he doesn’t have to enter the passenger section of the plane. So many things can have been done differently, but I am afraid that this is not where the media, public opinion, and politics will take us. The Times’ restraint will almost certainly be accompanied by more shrill attacks on the mentally ill among us. Lubitz, I dread will become another hockey mask, another poster child who will be held up as a clarion call for denying the mentally ill their confidentiality. Laws stand before Congress that call for allowing “caregivers” to be informed of what goes on between psychiatrists and the most severe mentally ill. Will Andreas Lubitz’s crash take us another step? Who else will psychiatrists be forced to inform? How will confidentiality be broken after this incident? Who else will be able to enter the circle that HIPAA laws now defend? I shudder at the possibilities.

We must look, I think, at another major factor in this crash: stigma. Some out there think that stigma like racism no longer exists or impacts on lives. Believe me, it is alive and well. I know people who have lost jobs because their employers found out about their illness. We are told that we are ax murderers even though we have no history of violence or making threats. Friends decide that they want nothing more to do with us. Spouses panic and file papers for divorce. Now they will say that we harbor these impulses in secret, that we are all ticking time bombs.

Andreas Lubitz kept his illness a secret, I suspect, because of what would have happened to him. He would have lost a lucrative job. He might have found himself unemployed for months or even years. Friends would shun him. He would find himself very alone. In the final analysis, because he could not reveal his ache — because he could not talk about it without bringing an end to the life he had worked so hard to create for himself — the pressure built on him. When he found himself alone at the controls of the jet, he forgot the passengers. Only his pain was real to him and he ended it in the most powerful way he could.

]]>1Joelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?p=101882015-03-27T18:21:38Z2015-03-26T19:59:18ZI don’t do nudes — at least so far — largely because I am shy about working with nude models. When I say “Let’s do some ahhrt” (reference to the movie “Gia”), I see my models with their clothes on.

Recently some shouted out that a favorite model site (http://www.modelmayhem.com) of mine is a place where “pornographers stalk”. Many models do pose in the nude there, but I think the person who made this statement makes a fundamental misunderstanding, namely that nudes are the same as pornography.

I have looked at many nudes in my time — running the gamut from Imogen Cunningham to Robert Mapplethorpe and Frances Woodman. And there is a fundamental difference between what I see in these photographers’ work — and those I have viewed on Model Mayhem — and pornography.

To put it simply, art nudes are about form and pornography is about sex. To understand what I mean, I suggest that you look at the photos of Edward Weston. Examine this photo of Charis:

.

Now look at this:

The intentions are clearly the same.

You can look for your own examples of porn.

It is true that some people haunt nude photography work shops for their personal pleasure. But if a nude model wants to ruin her career, she should pose for porn. Arousal can happen in both contexts, but you can look at an art nude and see something that goes beyond the arousal. A competent photographer of nude models such as Weston brings out shapes.

The fact that many photographers of art nudes do not reach his level of sophistication does not dilute their intention: they are seeking a perfection of the beauty they receive. Pornographers want you to feel aroused and to hell with beauty. By comparison, the work of pornographers is shallow and one dimensional. When I look at an art nude, I see much more. I see the play of the light and the shape of the body. I see how the photographer has arranged tattoos and curved the arms.

In our world, nude and pornographic are not the same. Give the photographers and the models they shoot a little respect.

My apologies to those who come to discuss bipolar disorder. My views on art are also part of me.

Any inclination of mine to become a famous bipolar author — the kind that writes a best-selling book, gets invited to national conventions, gets coverage in the national magazines, etc. –is curbed by one reality: that I live with bipolar disorder and one of my symptoms is grandiosity. Grandiosity — for you outsiders — is different from narcissism in that the latter is strictly an extreme self-love while the former is a beyond-passionate-conviction in a crusade and the belief that one is ordained to be the leader of that crusade. It is a thing that easily falls into a shambles as people are scared away by our hyper-exuberance. As we ramp up into psychosis, we may style ourselves as prophets or even God him/herself. I have been there — once I talked a Quaker Meeting into sponsoring me for a trip to former Yugoslavia in the middle of the 1992 war when I had no clue why it was important for me to be there, other than it being important for me to be there.

Oh, I developed a rationale for my spiritual mission, and I did interesting things such as become one of the first non-journalists to report first-hand on a crisis using the Net. The governments over there didn’t like me much but that is to be expected when you know the Truth and report it through that warped, half-melted lens. The incident leaves me with several doubts about myself — where was this belief that the Spirit was calling me to do this really coming from? and Should I repay those who financed me now that I am disabused myself of the sacredness of my mission? I believe some people — quite a few — tell you that I did good and maybe I did. Others grew to hate me. Since my diagnosis, I am wary of any motivation which suggests that I alone possess a message that should be heard.

A minister friend told me “Joel, you’re a leader.” I don’t know what to do with this since people seem to ignore me out there on the Net. The other thing is that I detest branding. The word smacks too much of the days when cattle were seared on their buttocks. I see many people get out there and become pundits in this disease, but I have to ask for myself “But what else?” As I have said before, I think it is healthy for us to remember how our actions in mania have disturbed the lives of others. These memories can help us identify warning signs of impending psychosis. Two things I watch for: first, just repeating what everyone else is saying. Second, believing that the uniqueness of my voice and activities entitle me to special consideration and respect. I don’t want to be one of those people who says what everyone else says, I don’t want to dress in business suits for talk shows (though I will go if invited), and I don’t want my “brand” to define who I am as a human being anymore than I want people to say “Joel Sax and Bipolar Disorder are the same thing.”

When you experience grandiosity — and its close cousin religiosity — it can destroy what is truly unique about yourself as you sacrifice your very identity as you crash around promoting the Cause. Someone says something interesting? You’ll say it, too, because you want them to join you in The Vision. If someone contradicts you or questions you, they become The Enemy. Paranoia easily enters when Grandiosity opens the door.

I never liked defining myself as functions, so branding never appealed to me. It has been for the better and for the worse. On the one hand, it has freed me to do many things that might be denied me if I labeled myself too narrowly. On the other, it has two negative effects. First, it denies people who think like this a way to condense you into a handle. (I tend to test as hyper-perceptive so labeling feels poisonous though I do it so others can crudely understand what I am on about.) Second, it can lead to a lack of focus: just what am I supposed to be doing in this world? That is a problem that has hounded me since I got my degree.

The idea of purpose also disturbs me. I had a purpose when I was manic. It drove everything I did, reaching into every moment, every interaction. Then in the emptiness of depression, the feeling vanished. I was a dead leaf floating in a brackish pond unable to act. Was this loss of motivation, a product of my attitude or my illness? I suspect the latter. Just like the admonition to exercise, the insistence to set goals is demanding of depressed me to do the impossible.

But purpose or no, I continue to write and take photographs because I do have my own experiences to which few others can relate. I’ve come a long way from my mania days when I felt my gifts were the only ones worth having. As for fame, I have learned to do many things without crediting them to this face. Leadership has changed from being the center of attention to being the one who ensures that things get done, often without fanfare or recognition. I shy away from calling this a purpose because that reminds me too much of the days when I thought I was God’s anointed. Things get done by me because I see that they need doing. That is what drives my volunteer activity, my blog, and my photography. I take satisfaction in what I do and celebrate the contributions of others. I hope people can learn things from me. I hope that the tendrils of the grandiosity kudzu don’t wrap me so completely that I become scattered, unfocused, and certain that I am more glorious than others.

]]>1Joelhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.comhttp://paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/?page_id=34852015-03-21T00:55:19Z2005-10-13T06:47:21ZJoel Gazis-Sax received his degree in anthropology from Pomona College in 1980. He has attended Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of California Extension in San Francisco. His travels have taken him to Greece, Mexico, Canada (OK, just Campobello Island), Italy, France, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Makedonia. His next trek is a visit to Senegal.

He has been on the InterNet since 1988, at first assisting the Institute for Global Communications with their Middle East and religious outreach. He established the IGC Balkans desk. In 1992, he traveled to former Yugoslavia to help set up networks and to use the InterNet to report back about what he saw first hand.

Mr. Gazis-Sax has lectured about his experiences in former Yugoslavia and the InterNet at institutions such as State University of New York Buffalo, California State University Humboldt, Saint Bonaventure College, and Dartmouth College. His photographs and writings have been published in various magazines and been widely distributed on the InterNet.

Since his return from former Yugoslavia, he has been working independently to develop effective ways to use the InterNet for creative and professional communication. This blog, Pax Nortona, was named one of the Best Bipolar Disorder Blogs for 2009 by Psychcentral.com, and other honors. He has assisted the National Park Service on its Alcatraz National Park Service web page, supplying both text and photographs for the project. His tweetbot “Bipolar_Blogs” is a popular and informative resource for sufferers of manic depression on Twitter.